Encounter changes for player built fleets & divisions

[kriegsmeister]

With the more recent surge in Battle Generator complaints again, I thought I would bump and edit my old suggestion on a more substantial change to the BG to make for a better overall gaming experience.

The core of this change is having players able to organize the ships that they designed and built into divisions and fleets so that they may optimize their use in battle scenarios. This is one of the most requested changes to the game (if not THE most) supported by many players in dozens of different threads across the board. The biggest argument against this suggestion is that war is messy, chaotic, random and you almost never fight with the tools that you actually want. The basis of this argument in that war is random is quite true, but the overall position has many, many flaws. First, it ignores the fact that, yes, divisions, squadrons, fleets, battlegroups, flotillas, task forces, et c. were actually a thing that were formed by admirals before, during, and after conflicts. Second, the admiralty and other naval leadership did have an input on what missions certain ships should "attempt" to participate in. Granted, ideal conditions are never guranteed however you will try your damnedest to get to those conditions are fight around the shitty hand your dealt. Which that last turn of phrase brings me to my third point, Yes, you will always have to fight with whatever hand you are dealt. However, it is not like playing poker with a completely random hand of numbers and face cards of varying use, war is a trading card game that you have spent months, years, decades to build up, organize, and plan your "deck" with specific intended gameplay strategies and counter strategies. You choose each and every card in your deck with plans on how to negotiate every possible hand you could draw and counter what the enemy has already put into play.

I'm not saying we should get to pick and choose our ideal engagement scenario each and every time, but to give us no input is just as ridiculously unrealistic. We simultaneously play as the general board/admirality/naval secreatary at the Macro level of design, procurement, construction and area of operations; as well as the battle commander at the micro level in the shoes of a Captain commanding a single ship or a Commodore or Rear/Vice Admiral commanding a larger group. Yet we have 0 input to the Meso level of gameplay in the organization of our units and with very minimal input in the missions our ships should conduct. That air of randomness should still be there with ships breaking down enroute, or unexpected encounters in a stormy night, or just the sheer fact the only ship in the area is an AA cruiser or Escort Carrier that was never supposed to really go up into a straight up fight against a battleship.

Original post

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So player assigned divisions/taskforces/battlegroups/fleets has been seemingly often requested but has not been implemented despite the functionality just being giving manual control of a random process. Let alone already being in the game with the Fleet Exercises. It is my belief this is due to how the game currently randomly generates scenarios.

Before getting into the actual encounter change suggestion just gonna add my $0.02
for adding Division and Fleet assignment control.
1.) Allows for efficient use of having multiple different classes of the same type of ship. Not have my AA escort cruiser doing bombardment missions, slow coastal defence battleships dragging down the fast battleship division, etc...
2.) Simpler and Better management and movement of ships across the globe by grouping them together, especially with larger nations like US/UK which can easily build fleets numbering in the hundreds.
3.) Should contain at least 2 layers (maybe 3) starting at the small 1-6 ship division of a single type of ship, which are then grouped into Squadrons/Task Forces/Battlegroups, and then lastly grouped together into Fleets, although this one could be forgone physically and just say SQDN 1, 2, 3 are part of the Atlantic fleet.
4.) Gives the player that meso-level of control to bridge the gap between the macro design and construction process, and the micro tactical control in battle.



Onto the encounter changes.

As it stands right now, I believe the way the encounter generator works is that it selects the encounter type and size first (fleet action, convoy attack/defense, small, large, etc). Then it looks at the available ships in the sea zone and picks from that list to see if you can even fill out the requirements for the battle. If you do have the ships it just shoves them into the various divisions all willy-nilly, only taking into consideration the ship type (B, CV, CL, DD). This process works for the most part, but does have it's many annoying quirks like a battle being generated but you or the enemy not having enough ships resulting in an automatic loss and loss of VP. Or improper ship assignments for specific missions like DD's and escort CLs attempting to bombard land targets or only having 2 of your dozen CVs in the area showing up for a fleet Battle.

My suggestion would at its core revolve around the player (and AI) made units. Redesign the battle generator to first look at and compare the number of independently operating units in a sea zone by the opposing forces and calculate a % chance of any 2 or more units encountering eachother. Relatively simple but let's expand and define some things.

1.) How and what to define as an independent unit. This could be a wide range of things from a single raiding cruiser, to a flotilla of convoy escort destroyers, to a full fledged 3 dozen ship strong Battlegroup. When creating your fleet you will be able to assign ships to be fully independent, part of an independent division, or part of a division attached to a squadron/group/fleet. Each different grouping would count as an indiviual unit for which the new battle generator would draw from to determine engagements.

2.) Players would have to balance between the size and strength of a unit with your total number of units, one side giving higher chance of winning individual encounters but lower chance of even getting an encounter VS increasing you chances of an counter but risking losing more of them. If your pacific fleet only sails together in one massive formation, while you would be able to easily crush any ship you come across, you would leave most of your possesions and merchants vulnerable to the enemy. Or conversly, you have most if not all of your ships operating as independently (ala Kriegsmarine) you risk them being slowly whittled down one by one.

3.) Various modifiers could be applied to increase or decrease the chance of encounters such as different sea zones having higher/lower chances, think Mediterranean high chance VS central Pacific low chance. Intel reports of enemy fleet activities would have a massive impact helping or hindering yours and the enemies encounter chances by allowing eachother to better determine when, where, how to engage in more favorable conditions. For Example "Russian 3rd Battle Squadron is heading to the Aleutian Islands." Choose one, Avoid fleet Contact, we Don't want to risk our expensive ships (-prestige, lower chance of large unit action). Continue operations as normal (No changes). Let us send the pride of their navy to Davy Jones's Locker. Sortie [drop down menu of available units] (++ Prestige, higher chance of large unit action)

4.) Invasion, Coastal Raids, and Bombardment missions should let you choose which unit to send. "The Admirality want to soften up our 'Invasion target' which unit would you like to send?" [drop down menu]. NO MORE DESTROYERS TRYING TO BOMB THE SHORE WITH THEIR 2x 2in GUNS!!

5.) Random engagements should still play a major part of war, because despite all the planning and preparation you can do, there will always be unexpected circumstances. Examples along the lines of "'Ship Name' has come across an enemy force while attempting to return to 'Unit' after refueling and replenishing supplies" or "Battlegroup 3 has come across a British minesweeper Flotilla" These engagements can also be key for building or destroying intel on fleet activities. If your cruiser which had been sent off to scout ahead of your battlegroup comes across the entirety of the enemy fleet, it could be destroyed before a message could be relayed leading your fleet into a trap, or should the cruiser escape allow your battlegroup to engage on their terms.

6.) There should also of course be engagements between randomly generated units to represent instances where a hodgepodge of ships were pulled from different units and cobbled together to perform a task because they were the only ones available, or the original parent units had been so severely depleted.

I feel like this would greatly improve the game by giving the players a lot more control and freedom in their strategic and operational planning. While still keeping that air of randomness that makes war so messy and unpredictable.

[kriegsmeister]

Added some edits to my original post to further elaborate on what I believe would be the best way to address battle generator issues amidst this more recent spark of interest in the topic over the past few days.